


games without frontiers

by arbitrarily



Category: The Favourite (2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Scheming, Double Penetration, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Power Play, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:39:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: The breeze shifts.





	games without frontiers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plutonianshores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores/gifts).



> This is set some time nebulously after Sarah has left court but before the end of the film. I hope you enjoy; your letter was such fun to work with!

 

She eats the Queen’s cunt most nights. Anne—for she thinks of her by name now, _Anne_ , the barest trace of resentment sewn into her name like a loose thread, threatening to unravel—is a greedy woman. Abigail is well-acquainted with greed. She is even better acquainted with how to make the Queen come. 

Anne, spent, over-sensitive, pushes Abigail’s face back from between her legs. Her hand is firm on her forehead and she does not move it, even when Abigail rears away from her.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” Anne says. Playful, teasing. It is a voice Abigail had heard often, in a lifetime previous, directed solely at her cousin. Sarah let Abigail trek the corners of every room they occupied, listening, watching, planning; she should have known better. Despite everything—and everything encompasses a multitude of transgressions—Abigail embraces the sudden flush of pride within her.

Abigail lifts her eyes to the Queen’s. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Anne’s hand drops from her. Her eyes are already drifting shut. Anne lays there, comfortably debauched against her pillows, the yoke of her nightdress askew, a breath away from snoring.

Abigail scowls. She wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. Anne does not share, not like this. As in most things, Abigail feigns her pleasure and earns herself its opposite.

 

 

 

 

She watches as Harley enters the ball. Prime Minister now, he arrives peacocking in his towering wig, his falsely flushed cheeks. His jacket is immaculate, white, long lace sleeves flopping at the wrists. Abigail has fantasized about defiling that jacket the moment she saw him in it. A splash of red wine, a smattering of liquid chocolate. Blood, the owner irrelevant. 

Her husband watches his entrance, too, with perhaps a bit more care. 

“My dear Masham,” Harley says to them in greeting. “You really should make efforts to teach your darling creature of a wife what a bit of taste should look like on a well-situated,” and here he pauses, he eyes her—the striped skirt that balloons around her skinny legs, the heavy make-up, the black star drawn on her face—with malice-laced assessment, “lady.”

The cluelessness of Masham’s reaction is no surprise, but Abigail glares, first at Masham and then Harley. “He likes me as I am, don’t you, Husband? You did put such exertion in running me down and making me your own after all.”

Harley’s mouth twists. “Our very own fox and hound, domesticated near at last.”

“Which makes you what precisely, Mr Harley?”

He does not miss a beat.

“The gamekeeper, of course.”

 

 

 

 

She drinks more wine. She flirts with Harley just to watch him bare his teeth, her husband’s face go sour, all spilled milk. The wine is warm, velvet, on her tongue. She thinks again of the Queen’s cunt. She thinks of it often. She is its most loyal subject. She snorts to herself, drunker than she had realized at the first. 

She knows what tomorrow will bring. A headache as she rises, deep into the morning. The only one to disturb her should she elect to stay abed is the Queen’s footman, no hesitation as he enters her chambers. As he stands at the foot of her bed. “The Queen requests your presence.” No, that’s not it. “The Queen demands your presence.” Yes, that’s more like it. She drinks more.

 

 

 

 

Another letter arrives from Sarah. She admires her dedication. Abigail can recognize her penmanship on sight. At a distance, even, on the page clutched in a servant’s hand. 

She takes the letter and she dismisses the servant. She holds the letter lightly, cupped in both her hands, as if fragile. The victory of Sarah’s departure was not enough. Abigail calls the thing that lives inside of her, the vise around her heart, hatred and she has in turn given it Sarah’s name. This too is not enough.

Abigail traces a finger over the dried ink. She imagines she traces a finger across her cousin’s face. The scar. Her finger moves not in apology, never that, but something more. Possession, she thinks. She drops the letter into the banking flames.

 

 

 

 

“The Queen,” Abigail calls to him, the door closed with a satisfying _snick_ , “is indisposed.”

“How very fortunate for the both of us,” Harley says. 

He seats himself without invitation. Launches into a plot she finds she has little care or patience for. His scheming bores her. He lacks imagination. He thinks of power in the strictest, most obvious sense. And even now, after achieving what he wanted, he still hungers after more, a dog with a bone. She of all people should recognize that in another. She of all people possesses some imagination, at the least. 

“I’m bored,” she interrupts. “You’re boring. You come at me with requests for favors, yet you offer nothing in return.”

Harley arches one eyebrow, the action pristine and well-rehearsed. This bores her, too. “I believe you have been offered plenty in return.” Nothing truly changes in his carriage or his posture, but a shift is there. A lean into the hunt. “How does the marital life and the marital bed treat our dear Masham's wife?”

Abigail slouches low in her chair, uncouth and unladylike. Harley watches her with barely concealed contempt. “I’d suggest you ask my husband, your bosom friend Masham. After all, it is you who enjoys his company far more than I do.”

Harley gives her nothing. “I do, don’t I. Which is how I know. He tells me you are most…professional in the bed chamber.”

“Is this flattery you attempt, Harley, or offense? I must confess, with you they’re often one and the same, and I regret to tell you I apply the same regard and weight to each.” She holds her hand up, her fingers and thumb curved to make an _O_. 

“I say professional when perhaps the word I long to employ is remote. Impersonal. To paraphrase, your man says your cunt is as welcoming as a bear trap.”

“Yes, but what does he say of my mouth and my hands?” Harley says nothing and she lets her body slip lower, all liquid and easy muscle. “Does he mention to you his own lack of initiative?”

“He does not. He is a gentleman.”

She snorts. “A gentleman he may be, but it is a true tragedy,” she says, “that my own husband has never made his wife come.” The Queen hasn’t either, but that is a different story. 

Harley grips his cane tight. His eyes are lit, and she has found he only truly takes interest in the face of one of three things: humiliation of another; his own personal triumph; and making her feel small. He must smell a trifecta here. “I would need an object lesson in such a case.”

“Of my efforts, or my husband’s?”

His mouth twists. She thinks she would very much like to hit him. “I am already versed enough in your cunt’s capability to climax.” She glares.

 

 

 

 

Before Abigail had married Masham, Harley had come to visit her small chamber. Abigail was laid, sprawled, in bed, a book of Sarah’s hastily stowed beneath the blanket upon his entrance.

“Good evening,” she said. He closed the door in response. 

“I think I should like to watch you,” he said after too long of a pause.

“And what is it you expect to see, Mr Harley?”

He reclined, still standing, against the wall. The room was too small; she could touch his knees, his thighs, if the impulse swayed her. It did not. His mouth tipped up, watching her already. His eyes were bleary, make-up smeared. She could smell the drink on him. “With you, I never do know.”

 _Outwitted by feminine wiles yet again_ , she thought but did not say. Instead, she waited him out, her body rigid, teeth on edge.

He cocked his head then. “I suppose one is always curious to see another take their own satisfaction. You’re very good at that, aren’t you, girl? Taking what you want?”

He did not need to say more. Men were similar in the games they played with girls and women, batting at them like a cat’s paw against a mouse. Anything for a show of power, she thought as she hiked up her skirt. Anything for a bit of control. So she touched herself, while he watched her. There was nothing performative in it, purely perfunctory. She could not imagine a man like him would know what a woman’s pleasure looked like so she gave him nothing. She made herself come, silent, a slight twitch of her hips down onto her hand. Even that felt as if it was taken by him, and not by her.

 

 

 

 

She looks to the fireplace as Masham fucks her. He is a quick fuck, even now, her body still a novelty to him, ill-explored as it may be. If she clenches her cunt around his cock, he comes faster. It is the lone way she encourages him. 

Harley was not wrong to characterize her as a remote bedmate. Beneath her husband, her thoughts are of Anne. Anne, snapping at her, earlier that day. “I did not know Harley had bought himself a parrot and planted it in my chambers.” Christ, they both drag and stretch on her limbs as if they’d wish nothing more than to draw and quarter her. It used to be so easy, to slip Harley’s words into her mouth and pass them to the Queen. It was easier when the Queen looked upon that mouth with a lust and a tenderness Abigail should have known better than to trust would last. 

She must fix it. She must find a way, make the Queen trust her in a way Abigail would never trust another. Implicitly, blindly. The way Anne had once trusted Sarah. Abigail watches the flames flick and curl. 

She sighs softly and Masham grunts, his lips spreading over his teeth in what she supposes could be considered a smile.

A part of her success, a larger portion than she cares to admit, is dependent on her continued alliance with Harley. “You are a conduit, nothing more.” That was what he had told her, not longer after her position in Anne's bedchamber helped him earn his own position. She must keep him content; she must give him what he wants.  And what Harley wants, she knows, looms over top and inside of her. She looks up at Masham through her lashes, at his gritted teeth and his narrowed eyes, the bright flush of his face and his chest. There is no great sorrow in loaning a man like this out to another. She must be sure to not make it look too easy, not to Harley.

Masham's hips judder into her and he spends. Abigail rolls her hips without meaning to as he pulls out. “Are you satisfied as well?” he asks, dragging her from her thoughts. There is a goading edge to the question which, like most things concerning her husband, she chooses to ignore.

“What? Oh, yes. Certainly. Well done.” She curls her body away from his, her attention still fixed on the crackling flames.

 

 

 

 

She is in bed with Anne. She is between her legs. Her jaw aches; she has already brought Anne off once. Abigail has learned how to do this quickly—suck at her clit and bury two fingers inside and curl—or slowly—long, probing licks of her tongue, alternating gentle and insistent—and which the Queen prefers and when. Even with the gowns and the husband, his title, the chambers gifted to them, even with all of that, servitude is still servitude.

The Queen wants it slow tonight. Abigail is tired. She is really very tired. She pulls back to take a deep breath in, and Anne immediately presses her head back down.

Anne pulls at her hair; her scalp stings. She blinks her eyes rapidly and wishes Anne would pull harder.

 

 

 

 

The next night Harley catches her in a dark stairwell. His hand is mean when it grabs her wrist and something twists, curdles, equally mean within her. She has been waiting for him.

“I would like,” he says, the start of a request, and she interrupts him. There is more on wine on her breath than advisable for what she is to say next.

“What you would like is to fuck my husband.” The mockery tastes good. Harley does not react; it might be the most interesting thing he has ever done. “By all means,” she continues. She lifts her face to his, half-limned in shadow, and she smiles. “I think I should like to watch.”

 

 

 

 

Masham is an easy man to master, and both Abigail and Harley know it. 

The three of them are in the Mashams' bedchamber. “Your friend would have you as you have me, dear husband,” she says. All acid, no honey. Masham’s face has fallen into that dumb countenance of his. She brings it out in him too easily. Better a dumb husband than a canny one, but she grows weary of explanation. 

He protests, of course. Uses words like _unnatural_ and also _adultery_ and both are funny enough to make her shove him. Shake him. Behind them, Harley paces. He has removed his wig. He continues to undress, certain of the outcome of her conversation with her husband. Her eyes drift to him over Masham’s shoulder. Harley is a slighter man when robbed of his refinery. 

“He wants you,” she hisses. She undoes Masham’s breeches. Despite his words, his cock is already half-hard against the side of her hand. She spits into her hand, grips it, ignores whatever it is he mutters under his breath. It sounds a lot like _please_ and _I can’t_. There is a high flush on his face, but he does not stop her. He hardens as she expected he would. 

She tips her face up, just under his jaw. She twists her hand at the head of his cock. “You will get on your knees and you will let him take you.”

For all his deficits, and there are many, her husband is a sufficiently obedient man.

 

 

 

 

Sweat mixes with Harley’s make-up. His face cracks like an old porcelain doll in his pale white paint. His cosmetics drip and smear on her husband’s skin, splotches of red and pink as if he is a mauled animal. He has Masham bent over the side of the bed, body marked and desperate like a martyred saint. It is a pretty enough thing to watch. She calls this information a weapon and she stows it away inside her.

Abigail crawls onto the bed. She undresses herself. Whatever Harley says to her husband she cannot hear it. But his words are enough, coupled with first Harley’s fingers and then his cock inside him, to make Masham bury his face into the coverlet, muffling his open mouth.

Naked, she decides she wants that mouth for herself. 

She spreads her legs and she grabs Masham by the hair. He groans as he presses his face between her thighs. Her husband makes all sorts of small noises, desperate and greedy and much unlike the sounds she normally draws from him—with her, it is always that reluctant aggrieved relief. 

Masham has never put his mouth to her before. He is not good at it. He is not like her: he does not even try, not really. His tongue is fat and wet as it pushes into her, and his mouth slurps noisily as he stops himself from begging. She threads her fingers roughly through his hair, jerking his face closer against her cunt, just as Anne does to her. She imagines a finer face, a marked face, dark and knowing and gloating, pushed down against her cunt. She almost gasps.

Impatient, she bats Masham’s face away, useless, and she touches herself. Harley’s eyes are trained on her as he holds her husband down. She does not look away.

 

 

 

 

The following night Abigail is escorted from a party. The Queen calls.

Abigail enters the Queen’s chambers on a clumsy, mocking curtsey. 

“You’re drunk,” Anne spits. She is Anne tonight, Abigail decides. Not the Queen. Anne is petty and sad. Needy. Anne waves a dismissive hand in Abigail’s direction. “I have no use for you like this. I can smell you from here, you wastrel. You’re pickled. It’s disgusting.” She looks down her nose at her as she approaches. “I have no need for a lazy, wanton mouth,” she says.

“Trust me, Your Majesty.” Her words slur and crash into each other. “There is nothing lazy about it.”

Anne slaps her. The sudden violence is more humiliating than painful. “You tacky slut,” she hisses. A laugh burbles out of Abigail. She claps a hand over her mouth and she sways, unsteady. Her cheek feels hot.

Anne looks near tears, her eyes glassy. She stands there in her nightdress, her heavy robe shrouded around her, as the party rages on in her own palace, in her name. She cuts a tragic, pathetic figure, Abigail thinks.

“Do you love me?” Anne asks suddenly. The usual petulance is absent from the question, replaced instead by something that sounds fearfully like an accusation. 

“Of course I do,” Abigail says, slippery with ease. She stumbles one step towards Anne. "You're beautiful, and I love you."

Anne’s face is both open and unknowable. The candles flicker and the rabbits rustle in their cages. Abigail’s make-up feels tacky and suffocating on her skin. Panic starts to thump along with her heart. It was Harley who said it—power, like any other piece of matter, can shift from solid to liquid. Pour right through your fingers as if you’d never held it. She wishes she was drunker. She wishes for once she could hold all the cards and stand firm in the knowledge they would never disappear. 

“Get out,” Anne says. Then, unexpectedly kinder, “Please. Go back to your little party.”

So she does.

 

 

 

 

Abigail returns to the party. 

She pours a glass of wine down her throat. She picks a knife up off the table. She sidles up alongside Harley. She finds she enjoys little more than the way Harley’s face goes that much paler under all that blusher when she presses the point of the knife to his ribs. All that brocade in the way, so much fabric to slice through, should she find the motivation. He pushes her away from him, and she goes, stumbling. Laughing. She remembers the motivation to poison Sarah; it still lives hot inside her. At the time she had thought: this is the most intimate thing I ever aim to do.

She drinks too much. Masham calls her a little fool so she spits in his face. Harley laughs, cruel, unclear if he laughs at her or with her. She drinks too much. She comes back to herself sprawled in their bed, her corset too tight, biting into her ribs, her breasts spilling out over the top. She rolls to her side, wincing. She can hear panting, gagging, the sound wet. Harley has her husband on his knees again. He has fed his cock into Masham’s mouth, Harley’s face a rictus of pleasure and very little shame.

She watches, outside of them. Outside of her control. She can't catch her own breath. It’s all slipping through her fingers.

 

 

 

 

Abigail goes shooting, alone now. She had breeches made like Sarah’s. She is a decent shot. She pictures Sarah as she shoots, as both partner and target. She goes in to visit Anne after.

“My Queen,” Abigail says.

“Would you look at you,” Anne says, more pleased than Abigail has heard her in weeks.

 

 

 

 

Anne will not say her name, not to her, so Abigail does the work for her. Alone, with the letters she intercepts, she will press the page to her lips. She will say her name, “ _Sarah, Sarah, Sarah_ ,” under her breath until she has none left inside her. Her tongue will wet the page, taste ink. She, like, the pages, will burn.

 

 

 

 

She is in bed with both Harley and her husband.

“Look at you,” Harley hisses in her ear, once he has her seated, his cock in her ass. The stretch is abominable. She refuses to let him see that. “You can be a good girl when you want to be.” He drags his fingers between her legs where she is empty and wanting, always wanting. He should know better: a girl like her can be anything anyone wants her to be. She’ll do anything she has to do to ensure a thing as small as this. Praise. Power. “Look how good,” he murmurs. 

He pulls Masham to them. His weight is hot and heavy against her as Harley kisses him. Their mouths are wet and noisy alongside her own and she makes no effort to join them. Instead she takes her husband’s cock, she guides it to her cunt. She cries out when he enters her, too tight, too much, Harley’s cock already inside her. She ignores Masham as he babbles about how wet she is, as if he had never known it possible from her. 

She tips her head back and she lets her husband fuck the both of them. Harley’s cheek is rougher than she anticipated against her own. She turns her face towards his ear.

“Can you imagine? If everyone knew,” she hisses. She grounds down on him, as best she can with her husband’s cock fucking her cunt. She feels so full it makes her thighs tremble, her breath stutter and stick in her chest. “If they knew you preferred ass to cunt.”

“Who would believe you?” Harley bites back at her. Masham is oblivious to the both of them, his eyes screwed shut as he ruts into her. 

Abigail makes a small, pitiful cry. She blinks until tears surface and she lets her chin wobble. Harley grabs her by the throat. She arches her back.

“I couldn’t stop him,” she play-acts, eyes wide and innocent, tearful. “He made me,” she gasps, mock horror. “He sodomized me.” 

Harley answers with a strangled groan, his eyes rolling, hips hitching against her. More turned on by the specter of shame or demise than anything else she could do to his cock.

A smile graces her lips. That’s all she wanted, isn’t it? Control, any way she could find it. Control, via sex. Control, via love. There’s none of that in this room, not now. Not with these bodies in it, inside her. Harley is snarling at her neck now; he thinks he is the one taking something from her, and what a fool, what a fucking simpleton. She closes her eyes and she lets the men fuck her. She thinks of Anne and she thinks of Sarah. They are always with her now, never really gone, and she cannot determine if that is a mark of triumph or of heavy defeat. Some days it feels like both.

After Harley comes and after Samuel comes—Samuel drops to the bed as if deceased; one could wish, she supposes—Abigail drapes herself back against the pillows. She spreads her legs, open and dripping with their spend. 

“What are you waiting for?" she snarls at Harley. He thought only he could take. “Eat up.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
